


Dareth Shiral

by deathwailart



Series: Eimhir Lavellan [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Dalish, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eimhir Lavellan on leaving her clan and the journey to Haven, a hunter pretending to be a spy who just wants to get back home to her clan and family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dareth Shiral

Eimhir Lavellan rises before first light and tries to pretend that it's a normal day. She washes her face, ties her hair out of her face and says her prayers like always. She eats in silence ahead of her family but even when she goes to put on her clothes she knows she can't pretend. The jacket is green at least but it's too quilted for something she would ever wear, something her Keeper procured from her through one of their rare trades with humans, not the light hunting garments she'd usually wear. She doesn't even want to think about the boots. Too heavy even though they fit and it's not as though she's never worn them but everything she's owned to this point including the clothes in her pack have always allowed her freedom of movement, as light as she can get away with but protective too. This just feels too padded, too bulky and when she's dressed she pats herself down and sighs because she doesn't even look like herself now. The scarf at least will smell right. Her mother has worn it so it smells of the scented oil she likes to wear and Eimhir herself has worn it around the camp, in meetings with the Keeper and the First and Second so it smells of elfroot and other herbs, in the forest so it smells like new pine and by the fire so it smells like smoke and when she ducks her head and breathes in, it smells just like home. It won't last but she'll be careful to keep it clean and avoid washing it for as long as possible. Behind her she can hear her family stirring, her parents who will still wear those anxious looks, one younger brother annoyed that she gets to go off without him and the other who has wept on and off since the announcement was made. She'll miss them all but she'll miss her youngest brother most of all, the gentle boy so unlike the rest of them.  
  
"They cannot see you as a threat da'len," the Keeper had told her when she'd handed them over for the doubt must have shown on her face. "Not only are you elven but you are Dalish, you wear your Vallaslin with pride and you remember the old ways. You are not like their city elves and they will be suspicious."  
  
"How am I to even get close?" Eimhir had asked because she was a hunter, she could be quiet and sly, she crept in the shadows with the best of them but this was something else, something else entirely the Keeper was asking of her.  
  
"There will be so much going on but our people have had a hand in the fates of the world for a time – you remember the tale of Damhnait Mahariel," and who had not, a Dalish elf and a hunter like Eimhir rising so high? "And then of course we heard that she recruited another of our people into the Grey Wardens."  
  
"The Sabrae clan lost their First and their Keeper," Eimhir had added softly and both First and Second had stared at her with unfriendly eyes but she had stared right back. Eimhir was the one leaving, not them, Eimhir either trusted more than they or deemed more expendable or some combination of both.  
  
"That they did da'len and the People will mourn at the next Arlathvhen, I only count us as fortunate for being close enough to hear of it." Then Keeper Deshanna had sighed and cupped Eimhir's face in her hands, kissing her brow and smiling. "We are all so proud of you da'len. You run swift as the halla, you follow Vir Tanadahl with your actions but you show a respect and value for Vir Atish'an in your face. There was no other choice but you and I know you will do your best for not just our clan but all of us."  
  
It was all true, Eimhir knows that, she's one of their best hunters and she picks up new skills quickly – she can skin a wolf and fashion the pelt into something warm, she's learned how to use herbs and to stitch wounds if they're far from camp or if no one wants to send word to the Keeper and the rest for healing. She can provide the meal and cook it too. Her older brother Muiredach took to crafting and left to join another clan with the woman that's now his wife, their first child on the way, her eldest younger brother Berach is a hunter like her but his other skills are rather lacking, not for want of teaching but out of a simple lack of desire to spend time learning them, and Cináed, gentle thing that he is, wants only to help tend to the halla and was always so squeamish whenever they tried to teach him how to hunt. Still, their people have not always found happiness when leaving their clan. This is the Free Marches and she thinks about Merrill and the stories they heard, exaggerations surely when they come from the shemlen for the most but after the luck the Sabrae clan had, she can only pray that the Lavellans have more.  
  
"Why does it have to be you?" Cináed asks, startling her. They look most alike, out of all the siblings, the same curling dark red hair and big green eyes, the sharp features and upturned noses, everything but the hair coming from their mother instead of the softer features of their father with his long straight hair, black as a raven's wing.  
  
"Because it does little brother," she says and smiles because she doesn't want to go, she wants to kick Berach awake properly and get on the move, wants to find the wolf den and make a necklace of the teeth. "I'll be back before you know it, it's probably just going to be lots of shem shouting at each other."  
  
"It's all shem ever do," her mother adds but her smile is strained and Eimhir cannot hold her gaze for long. "Berach get your arse up, we need to see your sister off at first light."  
  
Eimhir's stomach twists as she checks her pack again as her family and the rest of the camp rise and start to get ready, a solemn mood replacing the usual morning routine for there are no songs sung, no one laughed and calling to one another to start the day, even the children are quiet. The weather is cool and damp, the sun not risen enough to burn off the mist that hangs low and when she steps out onto the wet grass, it is thick enough that she cannot see her feet.  
  
She prays again. She cannot take this as an omen, she was not taught to read signs but when the Keeper emerges, she looks troubled for a moment, her First and Second on either side like sentinels or the statues they carry with them and place around the camp to guard them. Eimhir's legs are so heavy when she lifts her pack and walks across the camp with her family to the Keeper, so many eyes on her as the rest draw close and when the Keeper embraces her she feels like a child, not a woman in her twenties who has known hunting for as long as she can remember. There is a speech, a blessing, prayers, a wooden amulet slipped over her head and tucked under her scarf and she'll read the story in the beads later when she camps alone and listens to the wolves howling as they size up a lone hunter.  
  
"May the Dread Wolf never find you," the Keeper intones, "may the Creators guide you safe and see you home to us with good news soon."  
  
"Ma serannas Keeper," she whispers because she's lost her voice for the first time in all her life. Always laughing and joking, always loud and friendly and bright and now she is uncertain. She's frightened, she realises and she swallows the tears. "Dareth shiral."  
  
It echoes as she hugs her family, making sure someone sends word to Muiredach if they can, her father trembling, her mother frozen and even Berach is finally breaking, his chin shaking from the effort to maintain face as he sees it. Cináed has no such qualms and he sobs loudly. She has to pry his fingers from her coat in the end, nodding because if she speaks then she will cry and never stop even though she wants to say goodbye and that she loves them, that she'll be safe and she'll come back. But all she can do is nod and walk away, walk out into the forest until they can't see her and then she runs until her lungs burn from the cold air, tears blurring her vision until her legs hurt and she's hiccupping and collapsing, her back to a tree. She cries then, she howls alone, until her stomach hurts and she retches. She feels like a child now when she's not and she shakes herself and prays a final time before she wipes her face with her hands and straightens her clothes, thinking to what she has to do. She has to travel to Cumberland first but they've been there before so she knows the paths to take. She has to take a ship – she has the coin for it, careful trade and making sure not to anger the shemlen – and get to Jader, then she'll go south to the Frostbacks because that's where the meeting is, somewhere called Haven, the Temple of Sacred Ashes and even her people still respect Andraste. It wasn't Andraste's fault that everyone forgot about the elves and decided to try to wipe them out, to finish what Tevinter had started. Before she might have been safe going through Kirkwall but there are only dark words about Kirkwall now.  
  
She hopes she won't be seasick.  
  
The road is lonely when she has no other hunters to talk to. Usually they laugh and tell stories together, teasing one another and making dares and bets on the days when there is nothing interesting, complaining about this, that and the next thing. If Berach is with her then she'll embarrass him as best she can until he goes red and stomps off in a huff and even then she'll laugh and call him a big baby. Sometimes she can even convince Cináed to come with her, just to walk quietly, to pick herbs and to fish because she's the best in the clan at catching fish, especially if they're near a waterfall when the salmon return, shooting them out of the air with her arrows until she can fill a whole basket to drag back. This time though it's just her, arms folded because she feels cold all the time for some reason, keeping off the road but always alert and ready. There are Templars and Mages at war and she has no wish to be caught up in it so she listens carefully and changes her path as often as she can whenever she hears shouts or the heavy armour of Templars or the crackling of magic. Perhaps this is why her Keeper didn't send a First or a Second because she doubts either Mages or Templars would care where an unknown person with a staff came from. There are nights though where she makes a fire and camps because she must and people come creeping out of the woods, drawn by the sight or the smell, her little freshly caught dinner cooking before her. She shares her fire often enough, amazed that none of these people know how to cook and they talk little, not even an exchange of names but she is glad she can share something with them. All of them look so tired, she thinks. The Mages tremble and huddle in their robes and the Templars have shaking hands that can sometimes barely grasp their swords.  
  
It is a relief to reach Cumberland and board the ship, the men and women only caring about the coin she hands over and not about her Vallaslin or her ears, just telling her to keep herself out of trouble for the voyage. She presents the ship's cook with a bundle of fresh herbs and from then on she gets to eat almost as well as the captain, tucked in the kitchen where it's warm and they share stories, the cook sad to see her go once they reach Jader and it's the longest Eimhir has ever spent with humans. Perhaps this whole thing will not be so terrible as she feared. Ferelden cold might be though and she trembles when the wind cuts right through her from the start, tucking her face into a scarf that smells of the sea more than anything, her feet slipping in snow once she tramps from Jader to the Frostbacks and further south. Damhnait Mahariel came here once, a story all her people tell with such pride and she wishes they knew where she was, wishes she could ask Damhnait if she was afraid the way she is.  
  
Damhnait Mahariel looked down an Archdemon and did not flinch. Damhnait Mahariel gathered an army and stopped a civil war. Damhnait Mahariel vanquished other monsters and it was whispered that she even slew Asha'bellanar.  
  
Eimhir shoulders her pack, keeps her head down and reaches Haven where she finds a company of mercenaries, most of them the strange hulking Qunari folk but there are a few others among them, a couple of dwarves, a human, an elf. She slinks close to them and though they look her over, they don't seem to care too much. It's easy then, to follow them, to slip right inside this conclave because there are so many people and they are all arguing and how is she meant to follow this and understand what it might mean for her people?  
  
But then she has flashes of a nightmare, the world green but the wrong green, a sickly green. A woman of light who reaches out and scuttling spiders, the ugliest she has ever seen, and fear, there is so much fear. She can't remember though, she can't, she prays and _tries_ but it's just green light and a fear that tastes sour in her mouth. There might have been rough earth beneath her, shouting, perhaps soldiers but the world swims and the black is comforting in the end.  
  
There is cold stone beneath her knees, she is bound in shackles and her hand is glowing that same shade of green.  
  
"Well, shit," she mutters to herself right as the door bangs open and two humans appear to start shouting at her.


End file.
